Bot activity targeting commerce corporations in the Asia-Pacific region rose 63% last year, the highest growth rate worldwide. As adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)-based commerce spreads, it has become harder to distinguish legitimate automated traffic from malicious bots, and related security threats are growing, the analysis said.
Akamai Technologies, a cybersecurity and cloud corporations, said on the 23rd that it released an Internet status report titled "Agentic storefront security: Attacks targeting commerce" containing these findings.
According to the report, from July to December last year, 38% of AI bot traffic observed across all industries in the Asia-Pacific region focused on the commerce sector. Asia-Pacific retail corporations are shifting to "agentic commerce," using bots to hyper-personalize the shopping experience and reduce cart abandonment. As a result, it is becoming more difficult to distinguish legitimate automated traffic from malicious bots, web scraping, credential stuffing, and API abuse.
The travel and lodging industry was found to be more exposed to security threats than other regions due to segmented platform structures, high mobile usage, large-scale loyalty programs, and surges in reservations during holiday periods.
As commerce corporations consolidate payment and loyalty programs, inventory, logistics, and reservation platforms, APIs have also emerged as a new attack path. Twenty-two percent of all commerce web attacks targeted the travel industry, and 25% of those focused on APIs.
Commerce corporations are also facing heightened threats from application-layer distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, with layer 7 DDoS attacks increasing 39% last year from 260 billion to 361 billion. Among layer 7 DDoS attacks targeting APIs, retail accounted for the highest share at 51%, followed by lodging at 28% and travel at 21%.
Akamai advised that commerce corporations should continuously identify the APIs used for payments, loyalty programs, payment pages, inventory, and partner integrations, and check points where sensitive data could be exposed. It also said they should adopt a risk-based approach that can accurately distinguish legitimate automation from malicious bot activity.
Ruben Koh, director of security technology and strategy for the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region at Akamai, said, "The Asia-Pacific commerce industry is rapidly shifting to a more automated, AI-centered future by using Generative AI chatbots and other AI-based services to personalize customer experiences and lower purchase barriers," adding, "However, every interaction with chatbots, reservation process, and loyalty program integration creates new digital touchpoints, so they must be accurately identified, understood, and protected. This is a critical task in the Asia-Pacific travel and lodging industry, where exposure to threats is particularly high due to segmented platforms, popular loyalty programs, and seasonal traffic spikes."